Conatus and Lebensnot stand for those binding forces of life that, since the emergence of anthropology, have regularly been the subject of philosophical and psychological theory. Spinoza defined Conatus as “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being.” As changing conditions of life, Conatus and its counter-concept Lebensnot – which takes the need of life as its starting point – are also at the center of current media-anthropological discussions about the relationship between life and media. With the ascendence of the life sciences, the human has become more than ever the subject of science and the product of its technologies – in fact, in many respects the human has become a being split between living and surviving. This shift also appears in the turn to Affect Theory, New Materialism, and Speculative Philosophy. Here the human appears as a sensing, affective being and no longer as a primarily cognitive, communicative, symbolizing, or laboring being. Philosophical approaches of immanence orient themselves around vitalistic concepts (rhythm, movement, sensation, intensity), the notion of a living materiality, and the knowledge of physics (as well as of biology and neuroscience). Michel Foucault still assumed that the human – as object of knowledge, together with the order of the modern episteme – could dissolve, and yet the finitization of the human object of knowledge has so far failed.

The international conference aims at a media-anthropological consideration of key concepts (Conatus and Lebensnot) and seeks to encourage deepened discussion as well as amplified interdisciplinary exchange.

Situating culturally how the relationship between children and video games come to matter in the game industry, in legal and political regulation, in science, and among children and parents in Germany and in Denmark.

Designing Ways of Life in Time of Digital Abundance January 13, 2015

Along with the abundance of digital artefacts comes a proliferation of narratives about what they mean for our daily lives and how we live. How do new ways of life come into being? What does it mean that ways of life are designed? Where does agency lie in this process?

Speakers:Klara Benda (doctoral graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology)Allison Marlin (PhD Candidate, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne)